


my skin will scream (reminding me of who i killed)

by weasleysking



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Crying, Depression, Emotional Hurt, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, Swearing, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 06:23:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21405640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weasleysking/pseuds/weasleysking
Summary: “Buck?” Steve mumbles, half asleep, through the darkness. “You okay?”Bucky doesn’t reply. He’s found, in the last year of being back in real time, away from HYDRA and all his ghosts from the war, that people have a strange faith in words he can’t understand. Words were yet to help him explain anything to Steve or any of the doctors Steve had tried to make him see, anything that he felt, not really. There had been times when he’d managed it, fine, but now, after doing so well for a month or so, like he was finally recovering, how the hell did he expect to be able to explain to Steve this sudden urge to throw himself out the fucking window because he can’t take this pain anymore this costant pain-
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 5
Kudos: 111





	my skin will scream (reminding me of who i killed)

**Author's Note:**

> heyo, please read the tags and stay safe. x  
this fic in no way is romanticising suicide or mental health difficulties, and if that's what it sounded like at points, please know that was never my intention. i'm just working through some stuff and bucky seemed like the easiest character to pitch this on, (sorry buck) and i ended up being kinda pleased with how it was written and remembered that sometimes it helps when i read other people's fics of characters going through the same shit as me, so i thought i'd post for the lols. love you allllll.  
set post civil war, but bucky doesn't go to wakanda/into cyro, he stays with steve.  
(or maybe civil war didn't happen cuz fuck that)

Bucky can’t put his finger on the way it starts this time. One moment he’s reading a book on the couch; his head rests in Steve’s lap and Steve’s fingers make their way through Bucky’s hair. The next minute, they’re in bed after Steve suggests they have an early night, the light is out and  _ Bucky wants to crawl out of his skin.  _

It’s like all the air has been sucked from the room; the warmth that Steve’s body had been producing while pressed up against him was no longer enough; Bucky shivered and pulled himself away from Steve because  _ touch is bad touch means bad things touch means they’re gonna hurt you-  _

“Buck?” Steve mumbles, half asleep, through the darkness. “You okay?” 

Bucky doesn’t reply. He’s found, in the last year of being back in real time, away from HYDRA and all his ghosts from the war, that people have a strange faith in words he can’t understand. Words were yet to help him explain anything to Steve or any of the doctors Steve had tried to make him see, anything that he felt, not really. There had been times when he’d managed it, fine, but now, after doing so well for a month or so, like he was finally recovering, how the hell did he expect to be able to explain to Steve this sudden urge to  _ throw himself out the fucking window because he can’t take this pain anymore this costant pain-  _

“I’m fine,” Bucky says back, but he still shys away from Steve’s touch. If Steve finds it strange then he doesn’t say a thing; and he probably doesn’t anyway, not after having Bucky back for a year now, not after reading the file on what HYDRA did to him. 

Steve is clearly too tired to hear the shake in Bucky’s tone, as accepts that it’s not a touching night and murmurs “Night, Buck,” into his pillow. Bucky’s throat tightens when for a second, they’re not in this time at all, they’re in  _ their  _ time, they’re thirteen years old and Steve mumbles that same way tiredly into his pillow. 

“Night,” he whispers back. 

Bucky turns on his side and watches the clock, the red light bleeding through the darkness and telling him it’s 10:03. He lies there and he watches the clock for hours, each new minute ticking over a fresh thought in his mind that won’t, _can’t_, shut up. It starts with Steve, how badly he wishes he could turn over and shake him awake and cry into his chest and tell him that he wants to die, that his brain is suffocating under the weight of his trauma that didn’t just _stop _being there, it won’t fucking _go away_\- but he can’t bear the thought of Steve touching him right now, of getting too close to him, not when his skin is crawling and burning with unresolved trauma and shame and anger and guilt. 

And he can’t do that to Steve, he doesn’t want Steve to worry himself sick because he  _ will,  _ serum or no serum, he’s been worrying himself sick about Bucky since the day they met, even though when they were kids he should have been worrying about himself anyway, as Bucky told him on many occasions. 

As he watches the minutes, then the hours tick over, he bitterly thinks of the hundreds of reasons he doesn’t deserve Steve, the hundreds of awful things he’s done and the people he’s hurt and the people he’s  _ killed _ \- 

He’s panicking now, it’s 2:37 and he can’t breathe, he wants out, he doesn’t want it anymore, he doesn’t want to live, not if he has to deal with this feeling forever, and _fuck _all the people who keep telling him “it gets better” because what if he doesn’t _deserve _to get better? 

His broken mind wanders to the bathroom cabinet, where the enhanced pills for super soldiers Steve’s friends Bruce and Tony developed for him when he first woke up in 2011-

(Tony, Maria and Howard’s kid. Fuck fuck fuck fuck this-) 

He gets up as softly as he can, desperate not to wake Steve. He pads into the bathroom, the tiles cold, even beneath his socked feet, and he opens it. He’s reaching for the pills, his hand trembling, wishing he could perhaps shed one tear for what he’s leaving behind, but his mind is dry and so are his eyes. He feels bile rising up in his throat as he grabs the container, then just as suddenly as he picked them up, drops them back as the look on Steve’s face if he found Bucky like that on the bathroom floor flashes before his eyes. 

Even when he’s not trying to think of Steve, he does. 

He thinks of all the things Steve has called him over their life together. 

_ Bucky. Buck. Jerk.The love of his life. Soulmate. Best friend. Family. Everything.  _

_ You’re his everything, asshole,  _ he thinks to himself, his knees collapsing out from underneath him and his whole body shaking.  _ You can’t do that to him.  _

“It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not,” Steve had said to him once, tears constricting his throat and making his voice go all funny, when Steve had told Bucky he’d die without him, he couldn’t do it without him, and Bucky had spat back at him that maybe he’d have to. “It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not, that you’re my everything, Buck, because  _ I  _ believe it, and I’ll keep believing it till the day I die, which means loving you, and if I keep loving you then one day it’ll hit you like a lighting strike that you’re the love of my life, and you’ll believe it then, because for something to hit that hard, it’s gotta be a significant moment.” 

Bucky guesses, sitting with his legs pulled up to his chest, tears  _ finally  _ fucking pressing at his eyes, that this is the significant moment. He can’t breathe and he claws at his skin, desperate to do anything but leave Steve, because that’s out of the question now, drags his nails down his leg until it  _ fucking bleeds,  _ and it takes him watching the blood trickle down his leg and the cut to sting that he realises what he’s doing. 

His hands are trembling and he stuffs his fist into his mouth, his lungs filling with fire and his eyes burning. 

“S-Steve,” he gasps out, then a little louder, “Steve- Steve-” 

Steve is up with in seconds, in the doorway and stopping abruptly, his face going pale. Bucky is sobbing now, apologising profusely, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t- I didn’t-” Steve sits down on the floor and gathers Bucky in his arms, and neither of them can tell who’s shaking more, but Steve whispers “Buck, it’s okay, it’s okay, you don’t need to say sorry, stop, you’ll make yourself sick-” and Bucky’s gasping and they’re both crying, and Bucky’s saying “I don't wanna leave you, I don’t, but I’m so sad, Steve, I’m so scared, I don’t know what to do-” 

They sit there for what feels like hours, and eventually Steve whispers, “I love you Buck, don’t you ever forget that, please don’t-” 

Bucky chokes on his own tears and screws up Steve’s shirt in his fists tightly. 

“I know, I know,” Bucky says, panicking. “I know, I know,-” Steve tenses. 

“I know you do, I love you too, I know-” 

Steve only tightens his grip and brushes a thumb softly over Bucky’s face, wiping away a tear, and with it, Bucky’s feelings that he’s got nothing to live for. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, stay safe, get help, talk to people etc etc, im on twitter as @elenaclqire, come say hi! <3


End file.
